Cancer-causing chemicals found in Fort Worth well. Could they be in city water?
After years of using chemical-laden foam to put out fires on Fort Worth’s Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base, the Navy has found that at least one nearby private drinking water well has been contaminated with cancer-causing chemicals.
The chemicals, perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are commonly found in food packaging, electronics, carpets and other plastics. They’re better known as PFAS, which refers to thousands of chemicals that share similar components.
Most Americans have been exposed to the two most well-known PFAS chemicals, PFOS and PFOA, due to its use in many consumer products, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Most important for military bases, PFAS chemicals are found in flame retardants like aqueous film-forming foam, or AFFF, which Navy firefighters formerly used to extinguish flames caused by training exercises or plane crashes.
The chemicals can seep into soil and groundwater, which has led to contamination and health concerns in communities across the United States. Known as “forever chemicals,” PFAS are highly persistent and accumulate in the environment and in people’s bodies rather than breaking down, said Dr. Katherine Pelch, a professor at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth who studies how chemicals found in everyday products can impact public health.
“We know that PFAS can have very harmful effects in humans, and this evidence is supported by the science that has been produced in lots of different animal species,” Pelch said. “In humans, we know that they are associated with development of certain cancers and … with a decreased immune response, particularly in children, so kids have a decreased ability to respond to vaccines when they are exposed to these chemicals.”
While the Navy’s testing in Fort Worth did not find widespread PFAS contamination, Pelch and her fellow scientists have spent several years sounding the alarm about the lack of regulation of PFAS chemicals and their presence in water systems across the country at levels that could cause health problems.
Dallas-Fort Worth residents should continue to be concerned about contamination because state or federal agencies are not required to test for PFAS in drinking water, Pelch said.
“Even though we know that they’re widespread across the country, there’s no mandate that water systems test for them,” Pelch said.
In 2016, the Navy began to respond to public health concerns by looking at its historical record to determine where firefighting foam was used on bases and how it may have affected groundwater in surrounding communities, said Susan Brink, a Navy spokesperson.
Officials announced last fall that the Navy was testing private water wells within a one-mile radius of the Fort Worth base for PFAS chemicals, holding an open house in September for locals to learn more about how to opt in to testing. The base sent more than 1,000 postcards to residents and consulted municipal water records to notify residents believed to own a private water well, Brink said.
Since then, the Navy has tested seven out of 16 identified wells and found that one contained a combined amount of PFOS and PFOA that surpassed the EPA’s lifetime health advisory, defined as 70 parts per trillion.
“The owners were using municipal drinking water, so the Navy did not provide them with drinking water,” said Tread Kissam, a Navy hydrogeologist who led testing in Fort Worth. “We advised them not to drink from the well and only to drink from their municipal supplied water.”
The Navy did not test the municipal water supply near the base since the city is responsible for its own water testing. The Fort Worth Water Department last tested for six PFAS chemicals in 2013 and 2014 under an EPA requirement to test for contaminants that are not covered by the Safe Water Drinking Act, according to department spokesperson Mary Gugliuzza. Each of the city’s five plants had four samples tested for the chemicals, she said.
“None of the six compounds were detected in any of the 20 samples,” Gugliuzza said. “The 2013 to 2014 testing was the first and only time Fort Worth has tested its drinking water for these compounds.”
While Fort Worth’s testing met EPA standards, Pelch noted that the city’s detection levels for PFAS chemicals are above the levels now considered safe by other states. In New Jersey, for example, water departments must now take action if more than 13 parts per trillion of PFOS, a chemical in the PFAS family, is found in its drinking water. Fort Worth’s testing only reported a PFOS detection if the number was above 40 parts per trillion, according to data provided by the water department.
“The detection limits that were used in 2013 to 2014 are just too high to be health protective,” said Pelch, who co-wrote an academic paper in June arguing that federal and state governments should regulate PFAS as a class of chemicals rather than addressing substances one by one.
The EPA will likely require water departments to monitor for PFAS in the next five years at lower minimum reporting levels than Fort Worth used in its previous testing, Gugliuzza said. As for the Navy, Kissam said bases have stopped using firefighting foam during training exercises and changed the foam’s formula to contain different chemicals. However, that formula still has some PFAS components.
“They’re looking for a solution to use in firefighting foam that does not contain any PFAS, but at this time, there is no complete substitute for it,” Kissam said.
The Navy is also moving forward with plans to test soil and groundwater on the Fort Worth base for PFAS chemicals, which should begin this summer, Kissam said. While the formal testing period is over, residents living near the base can still contact Navy officials to receive on-site testing of their private wells, Brink added.
Concern about PFAS testing should not be limited to people living near the base, Pelch said.
“I think it’s particularly important that we begin, as a community, to ask what is in our drinking water and to be able to start those discussions if we do need to consider reducing our exposures,” Pelch said.
This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 5:30 AM.
